I'll Sing for my Dinner

by BR Kingsolver

  Cecily turned and headed toward the door. I was right behind her.

  Halfway through the door, she turned, “No interviews. No talking to reporters. I’ll sue your ass off. If you ever show up anywhere near me, or at my performances, I’ll take out a restraining order. Do you understand me?”

  Then she raised her eyes to her father. “Control your wife. I’m not threatening. I’m making promises. Keep that bitch away from me, and stuff a sock in her mouth.”

  We were in the car and I was starting to back out of the driveway when Franklin came out of the house and walked toward us.

  “Wait,” Cecily said. She rolled down her window, and her father went around to her side of the car.

  “Cecille, I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “Daddy, you should have been sorry years ago,” she said. “You’ve stood by my whole life and watched her abuse me. But I love you, Daddy. I’ve always dreamed of dancing with you at my wedding. I’ll send you an invitation, as long as you don’t bring her.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. “I would like that.”

  “How are your finances?” Cecily asked.

  “Don’t you worry about that,” he said. “I just started back to work. We’ll be all right.”

  “Daddy, send your bank information to the trustee. I’ll transfer two million to your account. But that’s the end. Understand?”

  “You don’t have to do that.” The look in his eyes was a mixture of relief and humiliation.

  “I know I don’t. Consider it hush money. I’m serious. If I see one word she ever says to the press, I’ll call in the lawyers. Put some of the money aside in case you ever get smart and decide to divorce her,” Cecily said, then turned to me. “Let’s go, Jake.”

  Franklin stepped away from the car and we drove away.

  We drove in silence to the shipping company. When we arrived, she supervised the unloading of them from the SUV, and then stood over the men who packed them in bubble wrap and laid them in boxes reinforced with wooden frames. But the violin and the mandolin we took with us back to the hotel.

  “They’re small enough we can carry them on the plane,” she explained.

  “Is that the only reason?” I asked. She had both of them on the seat beside her, and she hadn’t let anyone else touch them.

  “They’re the two hardest to replace. I can have another harp made. The man who made that one is still in business, and it’s too large to carry. The guitars would be difficult and expensive to replace, but I can find replacements. The mandolin is a 1928 Gibson F5. The violin is a Mathias Albani, probably made between 1690 and 1700. They’re insured, but where would I find replacements?”

  “What kind of guitars were in those cases?” I asked, my curiosity shooting through the roof.

  “A nylon-string classical, made in Spain in the early 20th century, and a Gibson hollow-body electric like Jared’s, only older. I’ve played his, and they really don’t sound any different.”

  “And the cello?”

  She laughed. “It’s ancient, Jake, an ultra-super-vintage 1979 model from an Italian company. The viola came from the same maker. The small harp was made by the same maker who made the large one. It’s a commercial model, but the larger one was custom made. Don’t worry, honey, we’ve got all the super expensive stuff with us.”

  ~~~

  Chapter 16

  Cecily

  After we left the shipping company, Jake asked me, “Are you all right?”

  I had been very quiet. “Yeah. I’m sorry you had to witness that ugly scene with my mother. But I’ve had an epiphany of sorts. You know, ever since I met you, I’ve been trying to figure out why in the hell I let myself get entangled with Eddie Jimenez. I’m not stupid, Jake, but running off with Eddie was a monumentally stupid thing to do.”

  He glanced at me with a raised eyebrow. I almost giggled. He was such a nice man, and he would never say something like that, but I was sure he wondered what kind of idiocy had triggered the most disastrous decisions of my life.

  “You told me that you felt suffocated,” he said, his voice carefully neutral.

  “Yes, but the fame, the pressure to perform, my agent, none of those were what was suffocating me. It was my mother. And I figured out this afternoon why I allowed Eddie to abuse me the way he did and why I stayed with him. It was because it was better than how my mother treated me. I was so used to doing whatever she told me to, that I let Eddie step into that role. When she said that you were pimping my talent, it suddenly made sense. Because you don’t force me to do anything. It’s almost like pulling teeth to get you to express an opinion when I ask you what I should do. The only thing you force me to do is think for myself, to make my own decisions.”

  I leaned over and put my hand on his arm. “God, I love you.”

  As we reached the hotel, I said, “I have a feeling that my mother was the initiator behind my agent threatening to sue us over my contract. That’s how she thinks. One more manipulation to get me to do what she wanted.”

  When Jake and I got to our room, I took the violin out of its case and handed it to him. He acted as though I had handed him a snake, or a baby.

  “Play it,” I said, smiling at him.

  “I don’t play anymore,” he said, trying to give it back to me.

  “Jake, I’m not asking you for a concert. But you used to play. Aren’t you curious about how it feels? It’s only us here, go ahead.”

  He picked up the bow and tucked the violin under his chin. I watched him place his fingers on the strings, and understood how he’d been damaged. He told me he had some nerve damage, but as much as I had watched him, I hadn’t seen him do anything that required such fine movement or touch. It was painful to see him try to bend his fingers and place them correctly.

  Striking the first notes, he slid his fingers along the neck as he drew the bow over the strings. His eyes lit up, and I was so glad I insisted. Hearing a fine violin and feeling a fine violin are very different experiences. He played, his right hand doing fine, the left slow to reposition. After a couple of minutes, he stopped and handed it back to me, a smile on his face.

  “Wow. So that’s what it’s like to play an instrument made by one of the masters. Play something for me, Cecily. Please?”

  I took the violin. “I’ve been thinking of getting another violin,” I said. “Later instruments are built different, and that started with Stradivari. His violins were larger and flatter. This one has been described as having a ‘silvery tone’, rather than the deeper and more powerful sound of a Stradivarius or a Guarnerius. That’s the way modern violins are made, and modern violins have a longer neck, so you can play higher notes.”

  Tucking the violin under my chin, I gave him a grin. “But this one is perfect for playing Paganini.” Niccolo Paganini, called the devil’s violinist for his extraordinary talent, wrote compositions that were so technically difficult that others struggled to play them. I launched into Caprice No. 24 in A minor. I first performed it in Vienna when I was eighteen, and it truly launched my career into another level.

  Jake sat down on the bed and listened. But halfway through it, my hand began to cramp and I stopped.

  Shaking my hand and flexing it, I said, “I need practice. I’m going to have to be careful what I choose to play on this tour.”

  “I know my violin isn’t that good, but you’ve been practicing,” Jake said.

  “Not three hours a day, which is what I did for years. My hand just isn’t strong enough.”

  I had three weeks before my first concert. We agreed that I would do three-hour performances to display my talents. Forty-five minutes of solo harp, forty-five minutes of violin solos accompanied by the local orchestra, and forty-five minutes of singing arias. And as rusty as I was at playing the violin, I literally hadn’t touched a harp in over two years.

  When we returned to Colorado, I began practicing eight hours a day. The last night before I flew to Washington to start the tour,
I waited until after Jake and I made love to spring my surprise on him. I figured he would be a little more receptive if he were relaxed.

  Straddling him and lying on his chest, I said, “Jake, I need you to do me a huge favor.”

  “What is it?” he lazily asked.

  I grabbed the tickets from the nightstand and presented them to him. “The favor is, don’t argue with me, okay? Just be a good boy and say, ‘Yes, Cecily, I’ll come hear you play in Washington’.”

  “Huh?” He took the tickets, one for his flight, and the other for a front row seat at the Kennedy Center.

  “You’ll be flying in the morning of the concert, and flying out two days later. We’ll have two nights together. Jake, I really, really, really want you to be there. It will mean the world to me. You’re the reason I got this chance, and if you’re not there, it will feel empty. I’ll spend the whole time on stage wishing I were with you, and hating myself for being away from you. I’ll probably screw up the whole thing, the critics will pan me, and I’ll be washed up at twenty-two. A has-been. Please, Jake?”

  He burst out laughing. “So if I don’t go, I’ll be the reason for all the failure and misery you experience for the rest of your life?”

  “Yes. Poor little Cecily, her spirit broken. I’ll probably start drinking and die of cirrhosis before I’m thirty. It will be a tragedy of cosmic proportions.”

  “You really don’t play fair, you know that?” he said, chuckling.

  “I’m a girl,” I said, wiggling my butt around and squeezing him inside me. “We have to get by on our feminine wiles.”

  “Yeah, I noticed the girl part. Okay, Cecily, I’ll go.” He smiled. “Thank you. I do want to hear you.”

  I flew out the next morning. A week of rehearsals awaited me, and then my re-debut on Saturday night. And then I would go to sleep in Jake’s arms again. That was the part I was looking forward to the most.

  ~~~

  Chapter 17

  Jake

  I flew in to Baltimore-Washington International, arriving in the late morning. Cecily met me in the baggage area, carrying a dozen red roses and a heart-shaped box of chocolates, which she presented to me with a hug and a big kiss. I was profoundly grateful that Kathy had smacked me in the head the previous day.

  “What are you giving Cecily for Valentine’s Day?” Kathy asked as we were preparing to open for lunch.

  “Huh?” I intelligently replied.

  “Jake, tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day. Why do you think it was so important to her that you be together? It’s your first one as a couple.”

  “Damn! I didn’t even realize. Oh, God. Kathy, what should I get her?”

  “Well, flowers probably won’t travel so well. You know, if I were you, and of course, I’m not the one spending the money, but jewelry is always a hit with me.”

  “Such as? I tried to give her a diamond ring, and she gave it back.” Cecily had taken off the ring and set it on my dresser before she left for Washington. She told me that since we really weren’t engaged, she thought it was best to leave it with me.

  “Jake, did you ever ask the girl to marry you?” Kathy asked.

  “Well, no, not exactly.”

  She gave me a look with her lips pinched together as though she’d eaten something bitter.

  “Not exactly. You’re lucky she hasn’t hit you up the side of the head with a two-by-four. And you weren’t bright enough to take the hint when she took it off. God, Jake, sometimes I wonder if you left all your sense in Afghanistan. Assuming you had any to start with.”

  “Okay. Other than a ring, what else?”

  “Did she get any jewelry from her parents’ house in Connecticut?

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “She didn’t take any clothes, nothing but her instruments.”

  “Well, don’t you think a nice pair of diamond earrings and a matching pendant would look good when she’s up there singing?”

  “Yeah, they probably would.”

  So I drove down to Denver and went to a fancy jewelry store. Thinking about the computer, the tickets, the dinners, all the things she had bought me since she recovered her money, I decided that I really wanted to get something nice. Something nice ain’t cheap. Something really nice damn sure ain’t cheap.

  I waited until we were in the limo—I had never ridden in a limo in my life—on our way into Washington, when I said, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Cecily. I love you,” and handed her the pink box from the jewelry store. She got misty eyed, and kissed me.

  “Thank you, Jake,” she said. “You are the sweetest man.”

  I sent a silent prayer to Saint Kathy.

  She opened it, and her eyes got wide, her mouth opened in a silent ‘O’, and she just stared at it. Then she jumped into my lap and kissed me until I thought I would pass out.

  “Do you like it?” I asked when I got my breath back.

  “They’re beautiful!” she said. “Oh, Jake, they’ll go so well with my dress tonight. Oh, God, they’re gorgeous. Here, help me put them on.”

  The dangling diamond earrings were pretty large next to her slender face, and the matching pendant hung from the bottom of her throat almost to her cleavage. I was glad I hadn’t gone for a larger set I considered; it would have overwhelmed her features.

  Looking at them in a mirror she pulled out from the back of the seat in front of her, she said, “Oh, Jake, they’re so lovely.” Then getting practical, “Are you sure you can afford this?”

  “I only had to mortgage the ranch,” I teased. “The bar is still debt free.”

  She shot me a look. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Yes, sweetheart. I’m kidding. Look, Cecily, I’m not wealthy, but Jared and I aren’t paupers. We own the ranch and the bar free and clear. When we sold the cattle and horses, we made a pretty penny. With the insurance money from Mom and Dad, I don’t really have any money worries, and I’ve never touched any of it. The bar supports all of us.”

  “Jake, did I mention that I love you?”

  “Not often enough,” I said.

  “Wait until we get to the hotel,” she promised. “I’ll make up for all the times I forgot to say it.”

  I had spent a lot of time in DC when I was stationed near there, but the Washington I knew and the one she knew were two different places. The Metro doesn’t go to Georgetown, and even if it did, five-star hotels weren’t something I’d ever frequented. Her room was large enough to shelter a small village. The bathroom alone was twice the size of my college dorm room.

  We were barely in the door before she started taking my clothes off. Watching her as she rode me, still wearing her new jewelry, was a memory I knew I would carry with me forever.

  We took a bath in a huge Jacuzzi tub, and then got dressed for dinner and the theater.

  “I hope the tux fits okay,” she said.

  “What tux?”

  “It’s in the closet. I know what size you wear, but without being able to fit it ...” She went to sit in front of the vanity and began putting on her makeup. “Hurry up. If it needs some quick alteration, we can send it downstairs and get it done.”

  “You bought me a tux?” I had never worn a tux. Marine dress blues was the fanciest thing I’d ever put on.

  “Of course not, silly,” she said. “It’s rented. But we’ll have to buy you one. We’ll get it tailored. If you can come to London, they have the best tailors there.”

  I wasn’t going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. I put on the tux, and it felt pretty good. I had no idea what to do with that ridiculous bow tie.

  Sitting and watching her, I said, “Don’t you have someone to do your makeup? I thought all big stars had people fawning all over them, doing their makeup and their hair, dressing them, wiping their asses.”

  She laughed. “Some of them do. They’ll powder me and touch me up at the theater. But I’ve been doing my own makeup since I was six. I can do it faster, and I know my face. Even professionals tend to try and overdo me,
and I’m so fair and slender that it looks like I’m wearing a fright mask.”

  I had never seen her wear more than minimal makeup, a bit of eyeliner and mascara, light powder and rouge. I watched as she spent over half an hour on her eyes alone.

  “What about your hair?” I asked. “Are you going to wear it down?”

  “Oh, no. I washed it this morning, and I’ll put it up.”

  And she did. With a box of bobby pins and a couple of tortoise shell combs, she put her hair into a French twist with the same speed and skill as I saddled a horse. She then covered the twist with a loose-knit sparling net. When she stood and faced me, my little ragamuffin hippie girl was transformed into an incredibly elegant and beautiful lady.

  Disappearing into the closet, she came out a few minutes later wearing a pleated gold and burnt orange dress, kind of Grecian looking, that hung from her shoulders straight to the floor. Her arms were bare, so that she wouldn’t have to deal with sleeves when she played. The overall look was stunning. Slipping into a pair of four-inch stilettos, she said, “Will you please zip me up and hook my necklace?”

  I leaped to assist her. She put her new earrings on, and said, “You look very handsome. Come sit down and let me tie your tie.”

  When she finished, she pulled me to my feet and turned me so that we could look at ourselves in the mirror. “I not only get to be the star of the evening,” she said with a smile, “I also get to parade the most handsome man in the place on my arm. All the women will be so jealous.”

  Going back into the closet, she hauled out a long fur coat and handed it to me, then turned so that I could help her put it on.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked. “Is it mink?”

  “Yes, it’s mink. My agent provides it. If you remember, I insisted that he bear all the costs of my performances. The dress, the coat, the limo and hotel room, all travel expenses. Even the makeup. That’s why he’s getting fifteen percent instead of ten. I don’t want to mess with all that crap. My mother loved the frantic scurrying around, the shopping, all that stuff. I think it’s a pain in the ass.”